Kenosis
An absence turned to presence is confusing.
Take Mary, who took for a gardener
One that she knew was dead and in his grave,
One that she then called Master, when he stood
Before her and said, "Mary," and resisted
Her startled, tender, human wish to touch.
We want to fill the emptiness with meaning.
I had a friend whose father died in his armchair.
And when my friend came home, there was a drape
With the body slumped beneath it, still in the chair.
She said, "I knew that it must be him. And yet,
It was a shock to see him sitting there,
So present and not present, this big man,
Filling his place as much or more than ever."
Emmaus
They're eating dinner with someone they loved,
Someone almost forgotten from their past,
Who has come back. And they are all amazed
And look on as they chew, as their friend talks
And breaks a fresh loaf open, and remarks
It's like something, and offers it to them
And says it yields up truth like a sweet savor.
They put their noses to the fractured crust.
But it's not bread they're breathing. It is words.
And then, they are alone, thinking of things
To ask that now they can't. What's a "sweet savor"?
And all they have is right before their eyes,
Bread crumbs, some honey, and a piece of fish,
All of which taste like joy and disbelief.
Damascus
Headlong in your career, breathing out threatenings
And slaughter against enemies, dictating trouble
For anyone advanced ahead of you, gambling
That you can stay ahead of your rep, checking off
The list of those to chop off at the top, and the place
Your name will be inked in, all the while businesslike,
Congenial with associates and flattering
To authorities and enforcers, bloody and obscene
Only in private mutterings and unspoken dreams,
On your way to yet another hanging, stoning, gossip-
Mongering swap meet of assassins, you're surprised
As much as anyone to be chosen--though it requires
A certain blindness on your part and such a change
You wouldn't know yourself--a vessel of grace.
Patmos
On a clear day you can see dark matter--
And still not know what you are looking at.
Or turn and see the simple heavens shatter
And make themselves into an alphabet
Of riddles wrapped inside of mysteries
Inside enigmas, coming from deep space.
What do you do when everything's a sign
And the goatskin of the universe uncaps
And pours its missing mass out like a wine?
I saw the script that glares inside rubbed eyes.
I felt the infrastructure of the face
That will endure though empires collapse.
I was astonished, I could hardly speak,
And wrote it all down afterwards, in Greek.
(Taken from Unholy Sonnets by Mark Jarman)
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